Home > The Deceivers (The Greystone Secrets #2)

The Deceivers (The Greystone Secrets #2)
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix

Part One

 

 

One

 

 

Finn


Every day after school now, Finn Greystone played pitch-and-catch with another kid’s dad.

Ever since he’d been old enough to pick up a baseball, Finn had loved the game. He loved the arc of the white ball against the blue sky and the thud of the ball in his glove. Now he also loved the way Natalie Mayhew’s father called out, “What an arm for an eight-year-old!” even when the ball wobbled overhead and dropped down in the wrong place, out of reach.

The truth was, Finn loved most games.

But ever since his mother had disappeared two weeks ago, everything had a double meaning. Pitch-and-catch wasn’t just a game anymore.

It was Finn’s job.

Finn was supposed to keep Mr. Mayhew busy. Or “distracted and unsuspecting,” as Finn’s sister, Emma, put it when they were divvying up assignments.

“You’re the only one who can still act happy,” Finn’s brother, Chess, had said. Chess had a knack for making Finn feel better about what he could and couldn’t do. Emma, at ten, was probably a genius, and she was the best at solving codes. Chess, at twelve, remembered the most about what had happened when they were all really little and their father was still alive—it was like Chess had a brain full of clues. And then there was thirteen-year-old Natalie, Mr. Mayhew’s daughter, who wasn’t related to Finn but had forced her father to take in the three Greystone kids when they had nowhere else to go. She was really good with computers and cell phones and, well, secrets. She was the best at keeping secrets.

But Chess made it sound like Finn being happy was the best skill of all.

The funny thing was, Mr. Mayhew probably thought he was distracting Finn. Mr. Mayhew didn’t want any of the Greystone kids thinking too much about the fact that their mother was still missing, or that their backyard had blown up, or that the police couldn’t find Natalie’s mother, either.

And Mr. Mayhew didn’t even know the half of what had really happened. He didn’t know anything about the secret code the kids still needed to solve to get their mothers back. He didn’t know that every afternoon while Finn played pitch-and-catch with Mr. Mayhew, the other kids were scrambling to find a way back into another world, a place of both known and unknown dangers.

At least Finn had gotten the big kids to promise that they wouldn’t go back without him.

“Don’t tell Natalie,” Mr. Mayhew said as he released another pitch into the air, aimed for Finn’s glove. “But this is exactly how I pictured being a dad before she was born. Playing games, carrying her around on my shoulders . . . All the stuff she’s too old for now—or says she’s too old for. I didn’t even think about how being a dad also meant changing diapers and cleaning up vomit and wiping up pureed spinach, which, I’ll tell you, I always thought was the nastiest of all the baby foods . . .”

Natalie was the prettiest girl Finn had ever seen. She had long dark hair that rippled down her back, and when Finn’s class had read a story in school about an elegant queen, and Finn’s friend Tyrell had poked him in the side and whispered, “What’s ‘elegant’ mean?” Finn had whispered back, “You know. Like Natalie.”

And Natalie was strong and tough and fierce, and she could type out a whole text message with her thumbs without even looking at her phone once, and she could do it faster than Finn could think. And when she wanted something, all she had to do was tilt her head to the side and raise one eyebrow, and her dad would say, “Oh, you’re right! We should order pizza for dinner tonight!” Or whatever she was asking for.

Natalie was powerful. That was an even better word for her than “elegant.”

So, yeah, Natalie probably would not want to hear that her dad was talking about changing her diapers and cleaning up her vomit when she was little.

The ball hit Finn’s glove a little too high and rolled off the top. Finn had to dart over and scoop it up before it rolled down into the pond that lay in the middle of the park.

“You’d think it’d be a good thing, being the fun dad,” Mr. Mayhew said while Finn jogged back into position. “You’d think that’s what people would want.”

A shadow crossed Mr. Mayhew’s face, which was really tan from all the time he spent out on the golf course, selling people fancy sports cars. Finn had known Mr. Mayhew for only two weeks, and he still didn’t understand what playing golf had to do with selling cars. But it seemed to work for Mr. Mayhew.

Finn did understand the shadow on Mr. Mayhew’s face, and the way Mr. Mayhew’s shoulders slumped when he thought Finn wasn’t looking. It meant Mr. Mayhew was going to start talking about Natalie’s mother, Ms. Morales. Mr. Mayhew and Ms. Morales weren’t married anymore, but it still seemed like he missed her a lot.

Or maybe he just missed arguing with her.

“Don’t you think kids and parents should have fun together?” Mr. Mayhew asked. He clapped his hand over his mouth, as if he’d just remembered he was talking to Finn, whose mother was missing and whose father was dead. “I mean, kids and grown-ups should have fun together. Like we are now. You and me. Life should be fun.”

Sometimes Finn wanted to hold up a scorecard for Mr. Mayhew, as if Mr. Mayhew were an Olympic athlete, and Finn could grade him on his recovery from saying the wrong thing. This was one of his better efforts.

It really wasn’t Mr. Mayhew’s fault that there were so many wrong things people could say to Finn, Emma, Chess, and Natalie right now.

“This is fun,” Finn said, tossing the ball back to Mr. Mayhew. He felt the little twang of his arm muscles; he watched the ball soar through the sky. He forced himself to smile, and it almost felt real. For just that moment, he let himself forget that Emma, Chess, and Natalie hadn’t made any progress at all figuring out how to rescue their mothers. For all the closer they’d gotten to finding a way back to the dangerous world—and finding their mothers—they might as well have spent every afternoon of the past two weeks doing nothing but playing pitch-and-catch alongside Finn and Mr. Mayhew.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” Mr. Mayhew said, which was an expression Mr. Mayhew used a lot. He smiled back at Finn, and with his light brown hair and his tan skin and his white teeth, he looked like someone in a toothpaste commercial.

Maybe Mr. Mayhew’s smile was just as fake as Finn’s. Finn glanced past Mr. Mayhew, and past the fence that separated the trees and grass and paved trails of the park from the trees and grass and paved trails of Mr. Mayhew’s huge backyard. Finn gazed straight up, to the blinds covering the windows of Natalie’s second-story bedroom in Mr. Mayhew’s house. Finn had a deal with the other kids: They left the blinds down when they wanted to tell Finn, Keep playing. We need Mr. Mayhew to stay away longer. When they were ready to give up for the afternoon, they pulled the blinds all the way up.

Finn had to shade his eyes with his hand, because staring back at Mr. Mayhew’s house also meant staring toward the sun. So for a moment, Finn couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

The blinds were still down, but they weren’t flat and motionless like they’d been most of the afternoon, and most of every afternoon, every day for the past two weeks. Instead, the blinds were flashing back and forth—open, shut, open, shut—in a way that made Finn think of butterflies flapping their wings. Or dozens of butterflies flapping their wings all at once, in unison.

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